Book & Author Details: Hate Notes by Gracie Graham Publication date: June 30th 2021 Genres: Contemporary, Romance, Young Adult
Synopsis:
Topher Elliot is high school royalty.
The king of Lakeview prep.
You know the type. Disgustingly rich. Blond-haired. Eyes the color of a clear, blue sky. And muscles for days.
He also happens to be enemy #1, the bane of my existence.
Only, now my scholarship is in jeopardy and, like the peasant I am, I must tutor the king himself if I want to graduate.
Still, if I have to be around him, I might as well make it worth my while. So I send him a scathing text, telling him exactly what I think about him. But he mistakes me for someone else. That’s when I hatch a plan: get dirt on the king, and watch his reign crumble.
It’s about time someone made the king come tumbling down.
Book & Author Details: Undiagnosed Love by Jacqueline Lee Publication date: July 1st 2021 Genres: Adult, Contemporary, Romance Synopsis:
What happens when you fall for the one person you can’t have?
Anna has always tried to do everything right, working hard through medical school, and now in her career as a doctor. She’s worked hard at her eight-year relationship with her fiancé Phil too, and can’t wait to get married and become part of Phil’s extended family. Then the unthinkable happens. Phil breaks up with her three months before their wedding.
Luckily, Phil’s younger brother Seth works at the same hospital and is there to help her through the aftermath.
Seth’s always been the laid-back, jokey one in contrast to his more serious brother. He’s always secretly envied Phil’s relationship with Anna because she’s his epitome of the perfect girl. When he sees how devastated Anna is after his idiot brother dumps her, he does everything he can to get her smiling again. But the more time they spend together, the more their connection grows.
Your brother’s ex-fiancée is off-limits. Everyone knows that.
The problem is when you accidentally cross that line, the repercussions can be immense.
Jacqueline Lee is an award-winning romance author who writes stories with heart and humor. She loves writing characters who have fun with each other while building a deeper connection. Formerly a high school biology teacher, Jackie is living her own version of happily-ever-after with her husband and three children in New Zealand.
First Lines Fridays is a weekly feature for book lovers hosted by Wandering Words. What if instead of judging a book by its cover, its author or its prestige, we judged it by its opening lines?
Copy the first few lines, but don’t give anything else about the book away just yet – you need to hook the reader first
Finally… reveal the book!
If you’ve read this good oldie, I’m sure you ‘ll recognise these first lines:
My philosophy is pretty simple – any day nobody’s trying to kill me is a good day in my book.
I haven’t had many good days lately.
…sounds familiar?
Not since the walls between Man and Faery came down.
…still haven’t recognised it?
But then, there’s not a sidhe-seer alive who’s had a good day since then.
and the book is…
Darkfever by Karen Marie Moning
MacKayla Lane’s life is good. She has great friends, a decent job, and a car that breaks down only every other week or so. In other words, she’s your perfectly ordinary twenty-first-century woman. Or so she thinks…until something extraordinary happens.
When her sister is murdered, leaving a single clue to her death–a cryptic message on Mac’s cell phone–Mac journeys to Ireland in search of answers. The quest to find her sister’s killer draws her into a shadowy realm where nothing is as it seems, where good and evil wear the same treacherously seductive mask. She is soon faced with an even greater challenge: staying alive long enough to learn how to handle a power she had no idea she possessed–a gift that allows her to see beyond the world of man, into the dangerous realm of the Fae….
As Mac delves deeper into the mystery of her sister’s death, her every move is shadowed by the dark, mysterious Jericho, a man with no past and only mockery for a future. As she begins to close in on the truth, the ruthless Vlane–an alpha Fae who makes sex an addiction for human women–closes in on her. And as the boundary between worlds begins to crumble, Mac’s true mission becomes clear: find the elusive Sinsar Dubh before someone else claims the all-powerful Dark Book–because whoever gets to it first holds nothing less than complete control of the very fabric of both worlds in their hands….
Have you read the Fever series? if yes, did you like it? Did you recognise the first lines?
Do you like reading fantasy? What is your favourite series?
Book & Author Details: Salt Kisses Seriesby Josie Demuth Genres: Fantasy, Young Adult
Synopsis book 1:
Starfish Island, a place where the human world and the magic world collide…
Seventeen-year-old Crystal White is the new girl on Starfish Island. Dragged to the remote community by her environmental activist father, she is eager to find fun that doesn’t involve touching fish guts or listening to local folklore.
During a midnight swim with some new friends, Crystal is pulled out to sea by the waves. Convinced she’s going to drown, Crystal is rescued by Llyr, a handsome stranger. As she searches for him in the following weeks, she finds there may be more truth to the Starfish legends than she thought.
Over a sizzling roller-coaster summer, Llyr introduces Crystal to magic she’d only ever dreamed of. But as Crystal comes to love Starfish Island, it begins to drive her family apart. A nearby power plant is devastating local marine life, and her parents are stuck in the middle. As the magic and mundane parts of Crystal’s life converge, she finds herself risking everything to save Llyr, her family, and herself.
Josie is an author who writes the occasional article. She loves all things gothic and magical, but particularly a story which is fun, intriguing and says a little something about the world. She loves to write about weird and wonderful happenings in her hometown, London but also sets her tales in the mystical lands of the Westcountry, England and more recently, Iceland.
Josie’s novella Liggers and Dreamers was published by Thin Man Press in 2015 and was described as ‘beautifully written’ in a critique by bestselling author and radical poet Heathcote Williams. Meanwhile her YA Salt Kisses series – a new-age eco ‘mermance’ – has garnered nearly four million reads on story-telling site, Wattpad and tens of thousands on Radish Fiction app. The first three books are now published and can be purchased through Amazon.
Josie has appeared on the ‘Wattpad’s most successful authors tell you how to do it’ panel at WattCon, Foyles, SoHo. Her former zine, La Bouche, has also featured on the BBC Today Program on a feature about literary sub-culture; in LOVE Magazine’s TOP TEN ZINES, and in Thames and Hudson’s FANZINES. In 2009, it was selected as the ICA bookshop’s first ever ‘Zine of the month’.
Josie also writes short stories and articles. She hosts fantasy writing competition ‘Under The Sea’, which last featured NY-Times bestselling YA author Danielle Paige as the celebrity judge.
Book & Author Details: The Imperial Orchid by Nicola Italia Publication date: June 22nd 2021 Genres: Historical Romance Synopsis:
At the end of the Victorian era, Orchid Mania has gripped the wealthy and aristocratic men of England. Collectors are willing to spend a small fortune to obtain the rare flowers from distant lands. Lord Holloway, president of the Royal Horticultural Society in London, has decided to finance an expedition team to Ceylon to capture one of the rarest orchids on earth.
Frances Wakefield is an educated woman and a gifted illustrator and has traveled throughout Europe documenting various plants and flowers for the Society. When Lord Holloway handpicks her to travel to Ceylon as a member of the expedition team, she is thrilled.
When she lands in Egypt to meet the other team members, she comes face-to-face with Miles St. Clair, Lord Holloway’s son and heir. He is the arrogant, handsome, insufferable man she encountered at several soirees in London and the team’s leader.
Frances soon learns the trip to Ceylon is to find a very rare orchid. But someone has been watching Lord Holloway’s expedition team, and treachery is afoot. While the expedition intensifies, so does the growing attraction between Miles and Frances, who must work together if they hope to make it out of Ceylon alive.
AUTHOR BIO:Nicola spent her childhood in Los Angeles. As a young student in elementary school, she had a great fondness for reading and began to write creatively. She graduated from university with a degree in communications and held a variety of positions in journalism, education, government and non profit.
Nicola has traveled extensively throughout Europe, China and Central America. Nicola’s goal is to create rich characters with a strong male lead and a passionate female lead.
For this challenge, use the first letter of each book title to spell the current month (skipping articles such as A or The). You can either use titles from your tbr or books that you have read/reviewed.
Jana has created a formal linkup which she posts on the second Saturday of the current month. She also has a theme for each of these lists, although you are absolutely free not to follow it at all.
Here is my list for July:
J The Jane Austen Society by Natalie Jenner
Just after the Second World War, in the small English village of Chawton, an unusual but like-minded group of people band together to attempt something remarkable.
One hundred and fifty years ago, Chawton was the final home of Jane Austen, one of England’s finest novelists. Now it’s home to a few distant relatives and their diminishing estate. With the last bit of Austen’s legacy threatened, a group of disparate individuals come together to preserve both Jane Austen’s home and her legacy. These people—a laborer, a young widow, the local doctor, and a movie star, among others—could not be more different and yet they are united in their love for the works and words of Austen. As each of them endures their own quiet struggle with loss and trauma, some from the recent war, others from more distant tragedies, they rally together to create the Jane Austen Society
U Unwind by Neal Shusterman
The Second Civil War was fought over reproductive rights. The chilling resolution: Life is inviolable from the moment of conception until age thirteen. Between the ages of thirteen and eighteen, however, parents can have their child “unwound,” whereby all of the child’s organs are transplanted into different donors, so life doesn’t technically end. Connor is too difficult for his parents to control. Risa, a ward of the state, is not talented enough to be kept alive. And Lev is a tithe, a child conceived and raised to be unwound. Together, they may have a chance to escape — and to survive.
With the warmth, wit, intimate friendships, and heart-melting romance she brings to all her books, Emma Mills crafts a story about believing in yourself, owning your mistakes, and trusting in human connection in Lucky Caller.
When Nina decides to take a radio broadcasting class her senior year, she expects it to be a walk in the park. Instead, it’s a complete disaster.
The members of Nina’s haphazardly formed radio team have approximately nothing in common. And to maximize the awkwardness her group includes Jamie, a childhood friend she’d hoped to basically avoid for the rest of her life.
The show is a mess, internet rumors threaten to bring the wrath of two fandoms down on their heads, and to top it all off Nina’s family is on the brink of some major upheaval.
Everything feels like it’s spiraling out of control―but maybe control is overrated?
When your nemesis also happens to be your fiancé, happily ever after becomes a lot more complicated in this wickedly funny, lovers-to-enemies-to-lovers romantic comedy debut.
Naomi Westfield has the perfect fiancé: Nicholas Rose holds doors open for her, remembers her restaurant orders, and comes from the kind of upstanding society family any bride would love to be a part of. They never fight. They’re preparing for their lavish wedding that’s three months away. And she is miserably and utterly sick of him.
Naomi wants out, but there’s a catch: whoever ends the engagement will have to foot the nonrefundable wedding bill. When Naomi discovers that Nicholas, too, has been feigning contentment, the two of them go head-to-head in a battle of pranks, sabotage, and all-out emotional warfare.
But with the countdown looming to the wedding that may or may not come to pass, Naomi finds her resolve slipping. Because now that they have nothing to lose, they’re finally being themselves–and having fun with the last person they expect: each other.
Have you read these books? If yes, did you like them?
Can’t-Wait Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Tressa at Wishful Endings to spotlight and discuss the books we’re excited about which we have yet to read. Generally they’re books that have yet to be released. It’s based on Waiting on Wednesday, hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine.
The book I’m waiting for this Wednesday is…
Eight Perfect Hours by Lia Louis
In this romantic and heartwarming novel, two strangers meet in chance circumstances during a blizzard and spend one perfect evening together, thinking they’ll never see each other again. But fate seems to have different plans. From the acclaimed author of the “swoon-worthy…rom-com” (The Washington Post) Dear Emmie Blue.
On a snowy evening in March, thirty-something Noelle Butterby is on her way back from an event at her old college when disaster strikes. With a blizzard closing off roads, she finds herself stranded, alone in her car, without food, drink, or a working charger for her phone.
All seems lost until Sam Attwood, a handsome American stranger also trapped in a nearby car, knocks on her window and offers assistance. What follows is eight perfect hours together, until morning arrives and the roads finally clear. The two strangers part, positive they’ll never see each other again but fate, it seems, has a different plan. As the two keep serendipitously bumping into one another, they begin to realize that perhaps there truly is no such thing as coincidence.
With plenty of charming twists and turns and Lia Louis’s “bold, standout voice” (Gillian McAllister, author of The Good Sister), Eight Perfect Hours is a gorgeously crafted novel that will make you believe in the power of fate.
Publication Date: September 28, 2021
Publisher: Atria / Emily Bestler Books
Lia Louis lives in the United Kingdom with her partner and three young children. Before raising a family, she worked as a freelance copywriter and proofreader. She was the 2015 winner of Elle magazine’s annual writing competition and has been a contributor for Bloomsbury’s Writers’ and Artists’ blog for aspiring writers. She is the author of Somewhere Close to Happy, Dear Emmie Blue, and Eight Perfect Hours.
Book & Author Details: Come Fly With Me by Janet Elizabeth Henderson (Invertary Too, #1) Publication date: June 28th 2021 Genres: Adult, Comedy, Contemporary, Romance
Synopsis:
They married in their teens. They haven’t seen each other in ten years. And now they have to fake a relationship to keep their land.
At seventeen, Katya Savage eloped with her lifelong best friend, Brodie MacGregor. Everything was perfect for two glorious years—until Katya became obsessed with her great-grandmother’s legacy. To be fair, who wouldn’t get excited about having a female bomber pilot in the family tree? Brodie, that’s who. Because when Katya asked him to help her find a plane exactly like the one her great-gran flew during World War Two, he had a hissy fit and gave her an ultimatum—him or the plane. Yeah, that was a dumb move… Anyway, now Katya’s back. With her plane. And all she wants to do is set up a scenic flight business on the land gifted to them both. Unfortunately, there are a few teeny tiny problems with her plan: 1. Brodie has his own ideas for the land that don’t involve her or her plane. 2. The family who gifted the land to them wants it back. 3. The only way to keep the land is to convince their families, the town, and a bunch of lawyers that they’re back together again. Now, if they could just stop fighting long enough to act like they’re in love…
Janet is a Scot who moved to New Zealand fifteen years ago. Among other things, she’s been an artist, a teacher, a security guard at a castle, a magazine editor, and a cleaner in a drop in center for drug addicts (NOT the best job!). She now writes full-time and is working on her 19th book. Her books have won several awards, including the Daphne du Maurier award for excellence in mystery and suspense. When she isn’t living in her head, she raises two kids, one husband, and several random animals. She survives on chocolate and caffeine.
Happy Publication Day to A Cut For A Cut, the second book in Carol Wyer’s Kate Young series of police procedurals.
DI Kate Young can’t trust anybody. Not even herself.
In the bleak countryside around Blithfield Reservoir, a serial murderer and rapist is leaving a trail of bloodshed. His savage calling card: the word ‘MINE’ carved into each of his victims.
DI Kate Young struggles to get the case moving—even when one of the team’s own investigators is found dead in a dumpster. But Kate is battling her own demons. Obsessed with exposing Superintendent John Dickson and convinced there’s a conspiracy running deep in the force, she no longer knows who to trust. Kate’s crusade has already cost her dearly. What will she lose next?
When her stepsister spills a long-buried secret, Kate realises she’s found the missing link—now she must prove it before the killer strikes again. With enemies closing in on all sides, she’s prepared to do whatever it takes to bring them down. But time is running out, and Kate’s past has pushed her to the very edge. Can she stop herself from falling?
USA Today bestselling author and winner of The People’s Book Prize Award, Carol Wyer’s crime novels have sold over 900,000 copies and been translated into nine languages.
A move from humour to the ‘dark side’ in 2017, saw the introduction of popular DI Robyn Carter in Little Girl Lost and proved that Carol had found her true niche.
February 2021 saw the release of the first in the much-anticipated new series, featuring DI Kate Young. An Eye For An Eye was chosen as a Kindle First Reads and became the #1 bestselling book on Amazon UK and Amazon Australia. The second book, A Cut For A Cut, will be released on June 29th.
Carol has had articles published in national magazines ‘Woman’s Weekly’, featured in ‘Take A Break’, ‘Choice’, ‘Yours’ and ‘Woman’s Own’ magazines and the Huffington Post. She’s also been interviewed on numerous radio shows discussing ”Irritable Male Syndrome’ and ‘Ageing Disgracefully’ and on BBC Breakfast television.
She currently lives on a windy hill in rural Staffordshire with her husband Mr. Grumpy… who is very, very grumpy.
When she is not plotting devious murders, she can be found performing her comedy routine, Smile While You Still Have Teeth.
Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together.
How it works:
Jana from That Artsy Girl assigns each Tuesday a topic and then posts her top ten list that fits that topic. Anybody is welcome to join and create their own top ten (or 2, 5, 20, etc.) list as well. You can put a unique spin on the topic to make it work for you!
The topic for this Tuesday is….
June 29: Most Anticipated Releases of the Second Half of 2021
readingtonic 